\centerline{\bf uk\TeX ug meets again}
\smallskip
\noindent
The third Meeting of the UK \TeX{} Users' Group was held
at the University of Aston, on 11 October 1989.
The programme was presented in two parts, Fonts: how they are
created and Fonts: how they are used. As one of those attending
said, this was a nice \TeX{} meeting -- \TeX{} didn't get mentioned by
the speakers until after tea!
\smallskip
\leftline{\sl Summary of papers}
\noindent
David Kindersley -- `Making letterforms':
this talk was built around a set of marvellous 35\,mm slides
showing the various kinds of lettering that he had designed and carved.
In particular these illustrated the freedom available to a designer
making a fairly short inscription which could be seen as a work of
art as well as conveying a message in words. Among the additional
freedoms were the ability to superimpose letters within a word,
to make minor adjustments to the sizes of the letters so that the
words would fit the space and the chance to create a backward sloping
italic to fit a design. Against that had to be set the necessity of
making systematic adjustments to letter sizes so that words could
still be read on, for example, a horizontal memorial set into
the floor.
David Kindersley also talked about his search for an
algorithm to ensure correct letter spacing in typesetting.
This is built on the basis that letter spacing should be
applied to groups of three letters -- the middle of the
three should be in the optical centre -- and that it is
possible to compute a `centre' for each letter in a fount.
His method ignores the bounding rectangle which was
imposed on metal type.
Paul Bacsich (Open University) -- `\PS\ needs MoreMaths':
a talk illustrated with overhead projector slides, spoke
about his project to design additional characters to be used with
\PS\ so that output to be printed in a combination of Times and
Symbol (for the Greek letters) could also include as many maths symbols
as Computer Modern. His particular aim was to have available in
Times\slash Symbol\slash MoreMath a set of pi characters comprising all
the pi characters in Computer Modern, the relevant ISO standard and the
\sgml\ list.
Apart from needing to design the actual characters in some cases, it was
necessary to find the baseline of the font and, even more
important, its maths axis so that all the characters
may be set properly.
Sarah Winthrop (Linotype)
gave a short introduction to typography -- communicating
by means of the printed word. She included a brief history of type,
including the system devised by Frutiger for the Univers font family
of using a two-digit code to indicate the style of the face, e.g.,
roman, italic, condensed, (second digit) and the weight: anything from
ultra light to extra black (first digit). She also explained the reason
why different sizes of type generally need different designs within the same
typeface.
Andrew Boag (Reading University)
used 35\,mm slides from two carousels -- so
that he could show two slides together when needed to illustrate his talk,
`Creating Letterforms'. He also circulated
a handout. His talk was based on seven points describing what type is
and therefore what type design is, and what those seven points mean
for the type designer. His illustrations showed screens from various
type design programs.
James Mosley -- `Type, evolution and examples'
had been billed as talking about digital type, but
assured the audience that he would in fact be talking entirely about
analogue type! He started by talking about the constituents of the
(English) character set -- the capital and lower case letters and the digits;
the \& and other oddities. He reminded us that Western languages were
unique in using two forms for each letter (upper and lower case). The
upper case letters were based on Roman inscriptions, particularly the
letters used on Trajan's Column; lower case type was originally designed
to mimic fifteenth and sixteenth century handwriting; and the digits
were based on Arabic shapes. All these shapes, together with some oddities,
had been incorporated into the original typewriter and had moved into the
standard computer character set from there.
There had been various experiments in typography, such as monoline type
with no distinction between upper and lower case. Another experiment was
the use of sans serif fonts. He showed a slide of a book published in 1900
using a sans serif font -- although the page was very decorated.
James Mosley then showed slides of some of the earliest examples of
features that are part of modern typefaces: a Greek inscription from
340 {\sc bc} showed undoubted serifs; an illustration from 1200 {\sc
bc} showing characters made by a reed pen or brush showed shading --
the change of thickness in the character shape, and an inscription
found in Pompeii shows a thick\slash thin contrast in upper case
letters. We were then shown pictures of the original types and their
twentieth century versions of the typefaces Bembo, Garamond, Plantin
and Grandjon\slash Galliard. These were followed by slides showing
copperplate, and the Baskerville type face, developments of which
include the advertising fat faces and Bodoni. The final slides showed
traditional punch cutting, as still carried out at the Imprimerie
Nationale, and the later technique of drawing the type on paper
followed by automatic cutting.
Andrew Trevorrow -- `Drivers revealed'
started the second part of the programme by
demonstrating his own \OzTeX{} and Victor
Ostromoukhov's Mac\MF, using an Apple Macintosh SE and a Dataframe
projector. As usual, the projected image was just a bit too dim for
comfortable reading. He showed the results of running the previewer
trip test, which resulted in a few pages on all of which the printing
was way out of the page area
Rod Mulvey (CUP)
described the \TeX{}-to-Type system which has been
developed at the Printing House of Cambridge University Press.
They typeset their work on a Monotype Lasercomp at 1000\,dpi using
an extended range of \TeX{} fonts. CUP will supply \TeX{} design
packs based on well-tested macros which include their preferred
book design.
To get \TeX{} to use the Monotype
typefaces in place of Computer Modern it had been necessary
to compile \tfm\ files for the Monotype fonts, bearing in mind that
Monotype only supply the width of the characters, not their height.
Sebastian Rahtz (Southampton University) on `\PS\ is good for you':
spoke about the problems encountered when trying to use
Computer Modern fonts with other \TeX{} fonts, such as the sans serif, and
at sizes other than their design sizes. Although it should be easy to
give \TeX{} a different set of \tfm\/s in order to set in a
different typeface, there was quite a lot of CM-linked information
built into \TeX{}. Most of this was in the maths setting parts of
\TeX{}. If you want to use fonts other than CM, there are
three approaches:
\item{\it1:} If using |lfonts| -- strip out the CM fonts and replace
them with what you want;
\item{\it2:} Redefine the fonts and the macros;
\item{\it3:} Throw away all the Knuth font information and redo it
(this approach is described in detail in \TUGboat 10(2)).
In `\PS\ meets Computer Modern'
Les Carr (Southampton University) talked about his attempt to convert
Computer Modern fonts into \PS\ fonts. It had seemed an
attractive project as both \MF\ and \PS\ use Bezi\`er
curves. The idea had been to refine the \MF\ descriptions to get
the information that \PS\ needs; this worked up to a point, but
the whole project proved impossible. In fact, short of scanning images
of the individual characters into \PS\, there was no way of
moving from \MF\ to \PS.
Phil Taylor (Royal Holloway and Bedford New College) -- `Computer
Modern meets \PS'. Phil Taylor had been involved in the
production of a book that used the Times typeface for text, Computer
Modern for maths and Adobe Symbol for Greek and similar. The real
problems came with the maths setting, as in the book all the equations
were in capital letters, not the lower case envisaged by Knuth. To get
the mathematical symbols in to the right places in relation to capital
letters, he had written a splendid macro that when presented with a
relevant symbol raised it by the correct amount to match the capital
letters.
\rightline{\sl Carol Hewlett}